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Climate Fwd:

‘Earth Overshoot Day’ Is This Week

Also, a pair of victories for oil and gas that could be short-lived

Susan Shain and

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Credit...Photo Illustration by The New York Times/Shutterstock

Saturday is Earth Overshoot Day, the date when humanity will have used “all the biological resources that Earth can renew during the entire year,” as calculated by Global Footprint Network, an environmental research organization.

The group has been doing this annual assessment since 2006. Since then, Earth Overshoot Day has been creeping earlier most years. This year, with the coronavirus pandemic putting a dent in the global economy, was one of the few when it arrived later than the previous years.

To determine the date, Laurel Hanscom, the Global Footprint Network chief executive, said the group collects more than 15,000 data points per country, largely from United Nations sources.

Researchers then compare Earth’s biocapacity (the amount of resources the planet’s land and seas can generate in a year) to humanity’s ecological footprint (that year’s demand for things like food and urban space, and forests to absorb our emissions of carbon dioxide), determine the gap and project the results onto the calendar.

If the whole world consumed like the United States, by the way, we would’ve hit Overshoot Day on March 14 this year.

While it’s an attention-grabbing approach, not all experts are on board.

Robert B. Richardson, an ecological economist at Michigan State University, has raised several issues with Global Footprint Network’s methodology, including the fact it doesn’t distinguish between sustainable and unsustainable uses of crop and grazing land, and doesn’t account for other means of carbon sequestration, like ocean and soil.

Still, Dr. Richardson said, the initiative has value in its simplicity as a way of increasing “awareness about the impacts of human activities on ecosystems and the planet.”

Responding to the critiques, Ms. Hanscom also focused on the initiative’s simplicity, calling Earth Overshoot Day a “snapshot” similar to gross domestic product. “You don’t expect G.D.P. to show inequality within a country,” she said. “It’s an indicator that gives you a high-level understanding of how things are going.”

Demonstrating its role as a high-level indicator, this year’s Earth Overshoot Day will arrive three weeks later than it did the year before. That’s a direct result of the coronavirus shutdows, which reduced humanity’s ecological footprint by 9.3 percent, according to estimates from Global Footprint Network researchers.

Although her organization is committed to pushing Earth Overshoot Day further back on the calendar, Ms. Hanscom was quick to point out that a pandemic wasn’t what she and her colleagues had in mind.

“The fact that Earth Overshoot Day is later this year is a reflection of a lot of suffering, and the reflection of imposed changes to our lives,” she said. “I don’t think there’s a silver lining to that.”

Far from a victory, Ms. Hanscom regards the delay of Earth Overshoot Day this year, and the pandemic that prompted it, as a warning sign.

“One way or another, humanity will come into balance with the Earth,” she said. “We don’t want it to be through disaster. We want it to be through intentional, designed efforts to make sure it doesn’t come at such a high and terrible human cost.”


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David Bernhardt, the interior secretary, at the White House in January. “I do believe there could be a lease sale by the end of the year,” he said on Monday. Credit...Al Drago for The New York Times

America’s response to coronavirus may still be stumbling and unfocused, but the Trump administration is moving forward with discipline and a strong sense of purpose in one area: rolling back environmental regulations.

Over the past week, we’ve covered two actions that will weaken protections and benefit oil and gas interests. On Monday, the administration finalized its plan to open up part of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas development, overturning protections that stretch back six decades. And, on Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency formally lifted an Obama-era regulation that was intended to rein in methane leaks at fossil fuel wells.

These two moves are only the latest of the some 100 environmental rollbacks that the administration has completed or is still working on, and which we keep track of here:

President Trump has also moved to undermine international efforts to fight climate change, most prominently by pulling the United States out of the 2015 Paris climate accord.

Those reversals, though, aren’t necessarily final.

Many have come under legal challenge from an array of plaintiffs including state attorneys general and environmental groups. Working through the courts takes years, but if the November election gives a victory to Democrats in the White House and in Congress, the more recent rollbacks could be, well, rolled back, and quickly. A 1996 statute, the Congressional Review Act, allows any regulation to be overturned by Congressional vote within 60 legislative days (that is, days that Congress is in session).

Used only once before the Trump era, the Republican congress swept away 14 Obama-era regulations in just 16 weeks. My colleague Coral Davenport counts dozens of late-term Trump administration initiatives that could meet a similar fate. A new president could also unwind the previous administration’s efforts through executive orders and rulemaking, but those are much longer processes.

And the Paris climate deal? Under the rules of the agreement, no nation can formally withdraw until four years after the original accord took effect. That date? Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020.

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A correction was made on 
Aug. 20, 2020

An earlier version of this newsletter, relying on information from the Global Footprint Network, stated incorrectly the month when Earth Overshoot Day arrived in 2006.  While the group’s initial analysis showed the date to be in October, revised calculations under refined methodology placed it in September.  Similarly, it is not true that Overshoot Day has arrived earlier every year from 2006 to 2019.  It has arrived earlier most years.  

How we handle corrections

John Schwartz is a reporter on the climate desk. In nearly two decades at The Times, he has also covered science, law and technology. More about John Schwartz

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